Lightbulb Over Head Blog

The following is the transcript of an interview I conducted with Amy McKenna, a young woman with B.A.’s in Ecology and Marine Biology and a Master’s Degree in Astrobiology. Mrs. McKenna currently resides in Florida and although she has stellar qualifications in her chosen field, she has felt the unfortunate grind of the current job market. In this interview we discuss her own experiences, challenges, and hopes as well as her advice to those trying to jump similar hurdles.

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So, Amy. What did you major in during your collegiate years and what did you expect to do when you got out of college?

When I started college I was a marine biology major and I had no clue what I wanted to do. As I took classes, I added in an ecology major. I figured I could work for the Environmental Protection Agency or find work on a boat, which would be really awesome.

When I went to Australia as a part of my ecology major, we briefly touched on stromatolites, which are a model for how life began on earth. Australia is one of the three places in the world that they exist and I ended up doing a report on stromatolites in Shark Bay.

I had also gone to astronomy conferences with my dad that hosted speakers who were talking about searching for life on other planets. One man was trying to find out how to best grow plants on the International Space Station. I began to learn more about Astrobiology in my Marine Biology course because a lot of the marine systems are used as a model for how life began which is one of the questions that Astrobiology tries to answer. I spoke with my professors about guest speakers that we had in that field and began writing to them to learn about their research. I contacted people working up at Kennedy Space Center figuring that I could go to school for Astrobiology and work for them. It was completely unexpected because I had originally wanted to get my Master’s Degree at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

So, I ended up beginning my PhD at the University of Florida, but then I downgraded to a Master’s.

Right now I have no clue what I want to do. It all depends on where I can find work, honestly. I’d take anything.

When did you complete your graduate program?

In August of ‘08

How long were you jobless after graduation?

I still consider myself jobless, so I’ve been jobless for just over a year.

But you are employed, yes? You’re just filling in the gaps, monetarily speaking?

I don’t consider what I’m doing right now a real career because it’s not in my area of interest.

What are you doing right now?

Thankfully, I found part time work at a horse farm here in Florida, ten minutes from home. So what I’m doing right now is shoveling horse shit.

Ha! How did you find that job? Craigslist?

I read a blog called “Fugly Horse of the Day” and the person who writes the blog is aware of the “economic times” and made a post looking for people who needed someone to work on their farm or people looking for farm work. She wanted to help forge connections through her site. Someone responded to her post with a website to find horse jobs called yardandgroom.com. I thought, well shit. It can’t hurt to look.

Little did you know “shit” would be playing a large part in your future.

Haha! Right! So I popped on the site and created and account and a profile and started searching for jobs. Lo and behold, there were a couple in the area. The one I really liked I couldn’t take because it was a live-in job. It wasn’t paid, but you were given room and board, plus board and feed for your horse, and you were able to take lessons from a former Olympic rider. In return you had to clean stalls and groom horses. But of course, my husband wasn’t to keen on me living away from home for a non-paying job. The job I ended up taking was with a family who owns two farms in Coco and Ocala (which is like the Horse Capital of Florida). I pretty much just take care of their horses for them.

I was jobless, myself, for about four months and it took quite an emotional toll. I found myself questioning all sorts of things. What did you feel was letting you down? Your education is certainly extensive but things weren’t clicking. In your most hopeless moments, what were your worries and frustrations?

Probably the biggest thing was, “Am I saying something wrong in my job applications?” and “Am I not employing the right strategies in my job search?” I was looking for jobs within the government and going through their employment sites because the best job security and benefits are with the government right now. Once you get a job with them, it’s really hard not to get a job afterward. They have the most openings for my field.

It’s hard to say…. It isn’t a confidence booster when you don’t hear back from jobs or you get that automated email saying you didn’t rate high enough for consideration.

The thing that I find amazing is how many highly qualified people are sitting behind reception desks or taking “jobs a monkey could do.” When I first got back to New York, I took a job doing work as a doorman/concierge at a luxury apartment building. It’s not exactly an ideal job for a graduate of NYU, but I needed to pay my rent and it was the best job I could find at the time. Recently I was brainstorming a character for a project with a friend and he described the character we were working on as someone who went from “God to Doorman, the lowest of the low.” It struck me, suddenly, that I’d had that job, and because of that, I had such a different perception of it than my friend did. I certainly didn’t think of myself of “the lowest of the low.”

You made an important point earlier when you said that you don’t think of what you’re doing as a job because its not in the career field that you want. It’s not a job. It’s just what you’re doing right now. That means your mind is open to continuing to strive when so many people are just settling for what they can get.

As some people have said, “You have an effing Master’s degree and you’re shoveling dung for money!?” I look at it more as keeping myself on a schedule. Without a job, I have an awful tendency to stay up later and later and sleep in later and later. That’s not good at all. It keeps me active because it’s pretty hard physical labor, plus… I’m being paid to get in shape. But really, it’s also important because when I do get that elusive interview, I can say, “Well, I’ve picked up part time work.”

Which is important to show you’re active and you have a hunger to do something with your life.

I’m also starting to volunteer at a local zoo.

Such a good point. People need to find something to pay their bills, but it’s important that you pursue your goals and sometimes that means putting in extra hours as well as seeking out volunteer opportunities and internships that can help build your resumé. At the gym where I’m working my “day job,” we needed more yoga teachers but we knew we couldn’t afford to pay them. We put up an ad on craigslist just to see if we could find anyone at all and we ended up with over 20 people, each ready to commit to a job that wouldn’t pay them any money at all. Yet, they all had interest because it would help them build their resumés.

I believe it. I’ve heard of a lot of people doing similar things. There’s a community on livejournal.com called “Team Unemployed.” It’s just a forum for support and commiseration. People offer tips and they often include: get involved, volunteer, do something! That way you can say what you’ve been doing with your time when you get the chance.

The same thing goes on a creative level. It’s actually part of the reason I began this blog. You have to tend that flame inside of yourself and keep it burning both for the sake of your career and your interviews, but also for yourself. You have to feed that hunger. I know a lot of people, myself included, have felt or are feeling like they have lost their way.

I would say that, for sure. I worry, because it’s been such a long time since I’ve done anything pertaining to my field, that I’ll get into a situation where a prospective employer asks me a technical question, I’ll flub it just because I’m not current with the knowledge. That’s a huge worry for me.

You just have to find ways to keep yourself going, keep yourself involved, and keep yourself on a schedule. I think people who are just getting out of school now have to take heart in the fact that, yes, things are harder than they have been in the past. For many people, there aren’t jobs waiting for them the way they used to.

I would say that really depends on the field and moreover, who you know.

That’s true. I have a friend who went to The United States Naval Academy and from my understanding, she hasn’t felt the pressures of our economy at all simply because her program feeds into a four year commitment/job.

It’s certainly tough.

At the same time, I know you have a passion for horses, and while you may not have a passion for cleaning up after them, working with them has to keep you positive.

It helps knowing that I’m accessing a knowledge base every day that I’m well versed in, yes.

So what’s on the horizon for you, Amy?

I went up to visit my family in Connecticut. My mom is an organizer for The Fresh Air Fund, which is a volunteer organization that takes inner city kids out of their environment in New York City and sends them out to stay with families within a days drive of the city for two weeks to get a taste of a different lifestyle. I went to an event with my mom and everyone was asking me what I was doing, which of course, I hated. Then they asked me what my degrees are and what I wanted to do.

As we talked, I found out that one woman’s husband works as a Senior Geologist for an environmental consulting firm and he is very dissatisfied with his current employees. Apparently he wants someone he can trust to do their job. She told me a horror story about how he had sent someone out to inspect for asbestos. The guy had checked the first floor and because he couldn’t see an easy way to the second floor, he simply reported to her husband that there was no asbestos in the building. Her husband went back to check and found out that there absolutely was asbestos on the second floor of the building. Apparently, he also had two employees who refused to go out an collect dirt samples because it “looked like it might rain,” to which I responded, “I’ve gone out riding horses during a hurricane! I could do that job.” It sounded like a job that was right up my alley and would use my degrees. Maybe grunt work is a little bit beneath a Master’s Degree, but you have to start somewhere. The woman offered to take my resumé to her husband and a few days later my mother got a call from the Geologist saying he was amazed that I didn’t have a job yet and that I met every requirement he was looking for. He said if he had a job opening he would hire me on the spot.

The company is owned by an international umbrella based in the Finland, but they do environmental consulting for the U.S. government and private corporations. They also do buyer communications and my skill set is perfect for that. Currently I have the promise that this Geologist is pushing my resumé through the system and that if they get this contract that they have a bid on, he’ll push to hire me.

That would be amazing!

It’s a waiting game now, but if I get this job, it will really prove my theory that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Networking is absolutely crucial. Sometimes you have to do that audacious thing and just contact the people you admire in whatever field you’re pursuing and ask for advice or assistance.

Exactly. That’s how I met the professor that gave me a job as a lab assistant during my time at the University of Florida.

All it took was one question.

***

Special thanks to my fantastic interviewee, Amy McKenna. During this interview, the following job listing or unemployment support sites were mentioned:

http://community.livejournal.com/team_unemployed

usajobs.gov

yardandgroom.com

Amy also mentioned that sites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com were pretty much useless.

Mrs. McKenna can be contacted for further information at amye (dot) mckenna (at) gmail (dot) com

Yesterday the Emmy nominations were announced and I was very pleased to see that there was a brand-new category titled Outstanding Short-format Live-action Entertainment Program. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was listed amongst the nominees in this category. I was completely over the moon when I saw that this web series was getting the professional recognition it deserves.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was created and directed by Joss Whedon. The web-short trilogy was born out of the recent TV strike as a testament to the potential success of powerful creative desire and good writing without the glitz, glam, and big money that goes hand in hand with Hollywood TV and film production. Whedon’s previous credits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Obviously, Whedon was able to use his vast Rolodex to get this done in good quality for as little money as possible. He managed a low budget that would still be considered very high by the standards of most web series producers, but I think Dr. Horrible’s nomination for a mainstream industry award marks an important step forward for all new media productions.

The web series stars Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion (star of ABC’s Castle and Whedon’s cult hit Firefly), and Felicia Day. Harris leads the cast with ease of a Broadway veteran (2004 Revival of Assassins) and the vulnerable comedy of a really good improviser. He understands video blog culture and brings a very believable “every man” quality to a larger-than-life character. Despite Fillion’s mediocre singing voice, his ability to fill the screen with his roguish presence makes him one of my favorite actors to watch. Day is adorable as Penny and plays into the comedy and absurdity of this piece well. All three installments of the series have a depth and attention to detail that make for seriously entertaining repeated viewings. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog can be viewed for free at: http://drhorrible.com and purchased digitally on iTunes and on DVD at Amazon.com.

I first stumbled across Felicia Day while watching her hit web series The Guild. As a fan of online MMO’s and World of Warcraft, I was struck by Day’s spot-on observation of online gaming culture and the comedic timing and believability of her opening monologues for each episode. The story of funding the guild seems miraculous to me. The first few episodes of the series were self-funded, but the rest of Season One was shot completely on paypal viewer donations, which is saying a lot because The Guild is available for free online. Fan support built the series as much as the creative team and Day publicly thanks them for that regularly. Season one also earned Day Best Original Digital Series at the South by Southwest and On Network Greenlight Series Awards. She is one of my personal creative heros because she is truly a jack of all trades. Her website can be viewed here: http://feliciaday.com/and The Guild website and viewing portal can be found here: http://www.watchtheguild.com/.

I could go on, but instead I’m going to turn you all over to the capable hands of Miss Day, herself. In the following video interview for PBS, she describes the business of marketing and creating a web-series. She also discusses the advantages of retaining your creative power.

Broadway tickets aren’t easy to come by these days, but sometimes there is a show that changes the face of the Great White Way, a show that introduces the greater theater community and the world to knew methods of story telling. This season, Next to Normal fits the bill.

With a risk-taking pop/rock score by Tom Kitt and unflinchingly perceptive libretto and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, Michael Greif’s dynamic direction soars. Greif’s most famous credit is undeniably the groundbreaking cult-inspiring musical, Rent, but he outdoes himself with Next to Normal. The show is both articulate in staging and in design/creation. It accepts the intimacy of a five character show while fearlessly abstracting its themes and emotional character relationships. Mark Lendland’s set is architectural, functioning both as a literal home and also as housing for the levels of consciousness that operate simultaneously in the play.

The play explores the life of a family struggling with the loss of an older son. The father attempts to hold the home together as his wife experiences dangerous bouts of schizophrenia and their daughter is left feeling invisible amidst the aftershocks. The cast is commendable as an ensemble, but especially of note are the performances of Alice Ripley, J. Robert Spencer, and Jennifer Damiano.

Alice Ripley’s 2009 Tony Award for Best Actress in this piece is well earned. Her performance as Diana is vulnerable, audacious, and gut-wrenching. As always, she is a belting powerhouse and her navigation of the lyrics and music is artful, specific, and fearless.

Spencer’s 2009 Tony Nominated performance cuts to the core. He allows himself to explore both the selfless and the selfish sides of the Dan, the father, without apology. His voice is unexpectedly young and fresh, a real find.

The daughter, Natalie, as played by Jennifer Damiano is similarly fearless and for a young actress, she is a force to be reckoned with. Her voice is interesting and her musicianship keeps the audience in the moment with her, leaving your heart racing when she makes an unexpected choice or change in dynamics. We should expect great things from her in the future.

If you see one musical this season, make it Next to Normal and support new visions and methods of story telling that keep the Broadway stage truly alive.

To buy tickets to Next to Normal or for additional information about this production, see http://www.nexttonormal.com

Does the world really need another article about the death of Michael Jackson?

Probably not, yet here I am on the eve of his memorial service and I can’t get him out of my head.

Earlier today, my cousin, Wendi, suggested that I tackle this complex, over exposed topic and ever since, I’ve been wondering what I could possibly contribute to this massive international dialogue.

The day Michael Jackson died, I was at my family reunion in Tennessee. In one of the few and far between moments when my golf and LSU Baseball-crazed cousins weren’t hogging the television to watch sporting events, the news of Michael Jackson’s heart attack flashed across the screen. I paused, unable to register what I was hearing. The rest of my family went about their business drinking a glasses of chardonnay, piecing together jigsaw puzzles, or reading quietly by lamplight.

“Michael Jackson? What? How? What? The Michael Jackson is dead?” My voice was high and squirrelly as I looked around the room for a response.

My father was the only one to take note of my outburst. He was reclining on a large, white, leather couch with his feet up on a pillow. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, making the familiar sucking noises that accompanied this strange habit. “Yup,” he simply said as he starred up at the screen.

The rest of the room remained the same. The news correspondent explained that Jackson had collapsed in his home earlier in the day due to a heart attack and could not be resuscitated at the hospital.

Make no mistake, I was shocked by this news.

But:

A few minutes later I was cutting myself a piece of pineapple upside down cake and life was continuing as usual.

I have an odd sense of detachment from this event. I’ve felt like a fly on the wall for the last two weeks with no relation to the giant emotional upheaval that’s been going on regarding the loss of this celebrity. On one hand, I see Michael Jackson, pop sensation and dance visionary, and on the other hand I see Michael Jackson, probable (yet unproven) pedophile and plastic surgery addict. I just can’t reconcile the two images I have in my head. Its like I’m watching him split into two entirely different people every time I watch a televised documentary of his life. He was some kind of bizarre, freaky genius. I suppose it makes sense that a recipe that unstable was bound to explode at some point.

In the weeks following Michael’s death, I received messages on Facebook from random people announcing that “Michael never touched those kids. If you had a son and you truly thought he’d been sexually abused, would you settle for cash or see the deviant put behind bars where he belonged?” My immediate response was that I would see him put behind bars. However, I can imagine if I were a private person and my face and my son’s face were being plastered in all of the tabloids that it would wear on me emotionally and physically. It must have been a terribly stressful ordeal for the mother of Jordan Chandler and if she was offered an unimaginable sum of money from the King of Pop, I could imagine how she might have brought herself to take it as a means of getting her family out of the spotlight and away from the scandal.

It cannot be denied that Michael was an addictive man. From the augmentation of his skin color and facial reconstruction to his publicity stunts, he lived for the lime light. Despite his famous song’s title, it did matter to him if he was black or white, or at least it seemed to, based on the physical evidence. At the age of 50, his eyes were pretty much the only recognizable feature linking him to his birth-given face. He went from revolutionizing the dance and music video industry to jumping on the hood of his limo before a court appearance. For me, he reached the limit when he hung his baby out of a hotel window in Berlin. In the pictures, his face is oddly excited, mouth wide to accept the shouts and protests from below as if they fell on his ears like praise, his eyes slightly deranged.

It makes me sad to see this plethora of misplaced showmanship when I think back on this man’s remarkable life. He was so talented and inspired so many people that he really didn’t need any of these desperate plays for attention.

Tonight I watched the coverage of MJ’s memorial service on VH1 with my friend, Greg. Besides the fact that we were surprised by Brooke Shields’ description of her close friendship with Michael (Who knew?), the evening was filled with adulation for Michael as a friend and artist. Even his friend’s questioned some of his minor eccentricities. My favorite example of this was when Shields described when she had asked Jackson, “What’s with the glove?” Between speeches, those in attendance yelled and shouted in worship to their fallen king and idol. It only took a changing slide to set them off repeatedly and unstoppably. It is undeniable that Michael left behind millions of fans world wide. More than all of the scandal and speculation about his eccentric life, Michael was an innovator, and more importantly, and inspiration.

That was his greatest gift. For the last two weeks there has been an outpouring of dancers and singers who all swear they started learning their craft because of watching Michael Jackson perform. That is Jackson’s true legacy.

I hope that is what people remember in years to come. I hope dancers learn to moon walk and I hope music videos get bigger and better at story telling. I hope children watch videos of The Jackson 5 and believe that their dreams are possible. Where is there love for music and dance, Jackson will be there to continue to inspire.

In my last post, I made mention of my support of the Obama Administration. The author of Acre of Independence (http://acreofindependence.com/), regarded as one of the top 100 Libertarian websites and blogs, questioned my assertion of Obama’s progress. When I praised Obama’s work abroad and his success in improving our international reputation, Acre of Independence responded with the following:

What policy area has America’s newly gained prestige you referenced helped us out in? In terms of our major foreign policy challenges (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al), there has been little shift either way. Much of our activity in Pakistan such as the Drone Attacks on suspected insurgents (as well as in Africa), which have increased in tempo since Obama took office, are likely to push many people into Al Quaeda or affiliated groups, too.

I happened to have lunch today with a friend who just returned from a trip to Egypt with his father. I believe they were abroad for three full weeks. As we ate our Thai food and he showed me pictures of adorable stray cats in a market place and camel rides around the pyramids, he mentioned how positive his reception was in the country. He also shared with me a letter from Alexandra Bonds, a professor of Lighting Design from the University of Oregon who is currently living Cairo. I asked him if I could share the letter here as it is well written and very interesting, as well as giving us here in the United States a sense of how effective our President’s work in foreign policy has been. The letter was prompted by a question about how Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 had been received.

Yes, Obama scored big in Cairo. The city is basking in an afterglow and aftershock of disbelief. Could an American president really have said all those things? The  Egyptian media is uniformly positive, rapturous at times. I watched commentary on Nile TV after the speech. The three women, a professor, politician and journalist were positively moon-eyed. Made me want to hand them a cigarette. Then I turned to Al Jazeera where they were interviewing a senior member of Hamas. With deep reverence, he called it an “I have a dream” speech. Then a former Israeli government official waxed on about it. Today, I read an op-ed in the Al Ahram with the line, “..I wasn’t the only one  in the audience with tears in my eyes.” It seems the only really negative reaction is coming from American conservatives, Israeli settlers and the Taliban. You can come to your own conclusions on that one.

The brilliance in the speech was how well it addressed its audience. The tenor, cadence and rhetoric were Arab. He used the word “Palestine”, which no other  American president has done. Arabs notice these things. Obama is brilliant at hitting his audience beneath the cortex. He goes for the heart and lymbic system. Arabs, suckers for eloquence, emotion and grandiose praise, wilted like lettuce in the desert sun. Many have criticized the speech on a few strategic or policy issues, but the criticisms are transparently tepid. “But, he understands us and honors our culture,” is the subtext. Saeb Arakat, a Palestinian spokesperson who has frequently shows up on  American news programs over the last decade, said “Since 1698 (then referenced some incident between the Ottomans and some European power) this is the first time a western leader has (then something about respecting the culture)” 1689. These guys keep track.

And, on the street it’s the same. My landlord, clutching his chest, said, “This man Obama has a great heart!”  My doctor (whom I saw on Thur PM for a vaccination), having just returned from Cairo University where he watched the speech, was so excited he couldn’t contain himself. He rattled on from English to French, brandishing a needled syringe about with expressive but scary flare. “This man is a genius!” And, these two guys are Christians. You should hear the Muslims, may peace be upon them (like my Obama technique?)

My response has been strange. For the first time, I welcome taxi drivers asking me where I’m from (in the past I cringed and often replied “Canada”). AMERICA I say, knowing I’m going to get the same response: “OBAMA, meya meya (100%) good man”.  Thank you, I utter humbly, taking credit for it all. Yes, it’s nice not to be ashamed.

Alexandra Bonds
Professor of Costume Design
Department of Theatre Arts
University of Oregon

In the mid 1990’s, I asked my parents if we could take a trip to Egypt. I had dreams of being an Egyptologist and an Archeologist and I was crazed with what could only be described as “Egyptomania.” I had hieroglyphic kits and my attic was packed with relics and treasures that I had used to build my ancient Egyptian clubhouse/palace where I dined with Rameses II (imagined as Yul Brynner from The Ten Commandments) on a regular basis. My mother and father looked at me sadly and said that Egypt wasn’t a safe place for Americans to visit. Judging by this letter and by the things my friend told me about his journey, we may be a little bit safer as public opinion regarding America and Americans is changing there. Perhaps we will be able to journey to the Middle East to learn more about Muslim culture and engage in a dialogue of learning rather than cave to fear of  religious radicals.

I have included youtube videos of the President’s speach in Cairo for your consideration and enjoyment.

It has been a long time since I last felt patriotic. The sound of “Proud to be an American” makes my skin crawl and decidedly ashamed to be an American.

That feeling of my stomach turning is so far from the joy I got from marching in the Memorial Day Parade in Chicago as a child. I would innocently dress up my pink, purple, and white tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers. I remember my mom and dad twisting the small silver wires to make a white dove with real feathers bought from some arts and craft store roost beneath my seat. It was truly a glorious vehicle to behold.

We would march, ride, rollerblade, and walk through the city with drums rat-a-tat-tatting all the way the way to the park. They thundered so loudly in your heart and when you closed your mouth, you could feel the sonic vibrations in your teeth. Additionally, I remember these colorful packs of jelly candies that they gave out every year when we got to our final destination in the park. They did acrobatics and someone important gave a speech. That was always the boring bit as a child, but I was way too busy eating my jelly candy and giggling with my friends from the neighborhood to care much.

I also have fond memories of going to Connecticut in the summertime to celebrate 4th of July with my father’s side of the family. Our current patriarch, my dad’s oldest brother Jack, invited every member of our clan to his house for the weekend and we would set up a volley ball net and I would swing on the swing that hung from the massive branch of the  giant oak tree out front. There was also a fish pond in the backyard and a big log that I would climb across and pretend that it was the gateway to another world. We would cook burgers and laugh and when the evening settled down, we would all watch a classic movie like Sunset Boulevard or Psycho. It was a time to feel the love of family and reunite and refresh. It almost felt like New Year’s Eve in the sense that I sort of measured my childhood years by the arrival of the 4th of July.

As I grew older, these small acts of patriotism faded. I grew out of my tricycle. The Connecticut house burned down. I began going to summer camp in North Carolina and I simply began to loath family dinner parties and the baggage of having that one evening to give people information and updates on my life by which they could measure my progress from the previous Thanksgiving or whenever we had spoken last. I enjoyed seeing people of course, but I always felt tremendous pressure. As an actress, I wanted to make my parents proud of what I was doing or I wanted to be seen as successful in an industry that is “hard” if not impossible.

My innocent idolatry of the red, white, and blue became like some distant memory.

The closest I came to patriotism was watching Independence Day when Bill Pullman gave the big speech before the epic battle with the Alien race that wants to take over Earth.

In that movie as a whole and especially during that speech, there is a collective sense of community and duty in the face of death. It connects American independence with the rest of the globe. I think I was attracted to it because as I was growing up, I really felt like America was an island. I was very blessed to be able to travel around the world to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Turkey, and Greece. I was exposed to other views of America from outside of our borders. I remember that I was roaming the streets of Paris as a child and looking into the glass window of a Patisserie. The owner of the shop rushed out and ushered me away to my American parents who were just down the block finishing their French morning coffee and croissants. The shopowner was not happy to have some American child poking around his window and pushed me towards my father before stomping back up the street and into his store.

When I was doing a theater exchange with some students from England, they were very welcoming but wouldn’t stop pestering us about how in God’s green earth President George Bush had been re-elected. I had to remind them that none of us, who were in our junior and senior years of high school, were old enough to vote. However, nothing I said could assail them. They wanted to know how our country could have been so dumb.

As a liberally minded young American, I became increasingly upset at many of the topics brought into the spotlight during the Bush Administration. In my mind, so many of them were connected to religion. Many of the protests against gay marriage focused on the fact that the Bible “tells us” that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why should the Christian God dictate what our citizens of varying religions should do? So many Bible Thumpers were in arms over A Woman’s Right to choose. I agree that this is a sensative subject, but I just don’t think that anyone should be able to dictate what I can and can’t do with my body. The rate of teen pregnancy is increasing in our country and more and more and our young men and women are starting families before they are ready. On top of this, the administration wanted to stop stem cell research, research that could help to find a cure any number of diseases that our world faces. In a way, stem cell research gives new life to these “pre” humans by using them to advance our knowledge and understanding of the human body and the development of new medicines and treatments to help us thrive and save lives.

After 9/11, I was devastated just like everyone else. It was just such a horrible tragedy. I could try to quantify my emotions and the events that followed it, but that is not really the subject of this article. However I will say that somewhere inside of myself, there was a tug on the string of my patriotism. I think it would have blossomed if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the mass marketing of everything blindly patriotic that poured from middle America. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked down on it all, but honestly, as I said at the outset of this peice, the song “Proud to be An American” makes my stomach turn because it is so mind-numbingly broad. Words like freedom and liberty are so much a part of our collective conciousness that they begin to loose meaning with every use. I think we take them for granted as does that song. It employs almost every one and manages to fill up verses and choruses while actually not saying much of anything at all. America as a whole became so inarticulate after 9/11 that I became desensitized to the American flag. It was on bookbags, pins, T-shirts, miniflags, keychains- EVERYWHERE. The flag itself became a pop sensation. No wonder no one took us seriously. No one takes Britney Spears seriously.

Near the end of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s musical, 1776, John Addams wonders on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence if anyone sees America the way he does. I am including the lyrics here for anyone who has not seen the show. I am including the sequence here for your viewing pleasure.

I began to feel a bit like Addams in this number. “Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care? Does Anyboy See What I See?” I saw the lifeblood of true America dying a little each day.  I saw our liberties being questioned and taken from us one by one.

This year, everything changed for me. Barack Obama was elected our 44th President of the United States of America. As a Chicagoan, I knew he was the man for the job almost immediately after I heard he was running. I knew it would be a hard road, but for the first time in a long time, I hung on to a hope for this country. I invested in current events and our national progress. Instead of writing off this war as an egregious nightmare created by the Bush Administration, I saw a man capable of ending our part in the turmoil and I what’s more, I listened and I felt connected to those lost, and those still fighting.

I know that in recent articles I have been disparaging about the spirit I sometimes feel while living in New York City. However, I haven’t mentioned that the true strength of our community sometimes shines so brightly that I am left gaping in awe. I have felt it several times, but I will tell you that on Election Night 2008, New York City came alive. Cars zipped through Bushwick in Brooklyn with loudspeakers chanting Obama’s name. People smiled at each other in the East Village and waved American flags not because thats what they were obligated to do to support our country but because they were moved to raise our country’s iconic colors. In Time’s Square, the lights shown with hope and triumph, and not with amusement park neon.

In his iconic speech from Election night 2008, Barck Obama reminded me that we are not a collection of red and blue states, but that we are forevermore the United States. I realize that I am capable of prejudice, that in this post I have called middle America uncultured, and called recent national patriotism into question. I have pointed many fingers. I know have a lot to learn and I am not saying that I don’t believe it can come from being exposed to opinions from other parts of our great Nation. But today.

Today we stand United. Today, I am proud to be an American. Today somebody is there. Today is our Independence Day.